DETAILS

This arrangement reflects an opportunistic pitch by prison-oriented technology companies that has found favor with budget-minded government officials. In effect, companies like OMS have allowed municipalities like Richland County to save the costs of monitoring offenders by having the offenders pay themselves. The county wins, the company wins and people like Green find themselves confronting additional drains on their limited means.

In Richland County, if offenders don’t — or simply can’t — meet their payments, the company is obliged to contact police in order to “return [the offender] to the custody of the [Richland County] Detention Center,” a public facility.

In other words, if you can’t pay your electronic monitoring bill, you get sent back to jail.